#&zosia

It happens in the eighth month. Miraculous, or not depending on how you looked at it, Kayla had been able to pass the psychiatric exam to be readmitted into full service. She leaves the following week and then her and her team deploy into Iraq on the second month, on Operation IMPACT. The work is hard but helping the local forces fight off Daesh keeps her busy. They ping pong back and forth between Iraq and Syria.  It is eight months of gunfire, dry air, and mortar explosions. Subsequently, eight months of bad dreams, long nights, and self-medication —the wagon being long fallen off of. Her only solace comes from the occasional letter from Zosia, always poetic and never failing to make Kayla long to be back in her arms again. Some nights, instead of staring down the bottom of a bottle, Kayla rereads those letters in her cot, picture of Zosia clutched to her chest.

               The last letter she got from Zosia was a month ago, and a picture of a tiny baby, Cordelia, now occupies the same space as Zosia’s picture, secured tightly in the breast pocket above her heart. And although Kayla had a letter written up that night, they have been out on a mission for the last four weeks and there has been no contact in or out. In her letter, she reasons with herself and promises to Zosia she’ll be home soon, and for good. She vows of a life together, forever if Zosia will have her, alludes to marriage. It’s the kind of letter that reads like a dream.

But all dreams must come to an end. You have to wake up. And sometimes you wake up in a nightmare. And it happens. It happens on the eighth month.

               There’s a pit in the bottom of her stomach that day. Something feels wrong the minute they step into the Southern parts of Baghdad. It’s quiet and the streets are empty. They’re doing a sweep when the hair on the back of Kayla’s neck stand up. Chaos erupts as they’re ambushed. Kayla returns fire, barks out commands —having to switch between English and Arabic. She feels the sting of a bullet piercing her shoulder. One turns into two and two turns into three before the rounds from her gun stop and Kayla falls back. The pain is bad enough but the third bullet hit her right in the chest, and Kayla feels like she can’t breathe. She collapses back against their Humvee. Her heart pounds in her ears but she can still hear enough to know the shooting has stopped. Jack rushes to her, crouches and shoots a hand out to apply pressure. “Kayla, hey look at me, you’re good,” he says before turning around and calling out for a medic. He turns back to her, smiles as best as he can, and says, “you’re good, you’re fine, barely even gr—“. Kayla hears the shot at the same time as it hits Jack’s head. One second he’s smiling and the next his smile is replaced by the exit trajectory of a bullet, a bullet that’s continued and lodged itself into Kayla’s other shoulder. His whole body weight falls onto Kayla, hand going limp.